Civil War on the Left

The Liberal Crackup (1)

Featured image I think it is time to retire the “Civil War on the Left” series and replace it with The Liberal Crackup, because the left is indeed crumbling. And let’s start with the genius idea for a remedy for inflation: price controls! That’s the recommendation from (who else) The Guardian: We have a powerful weapon to fight inflation: price controls. It’s time we consider it By Isabella Weber (assistant professor of economics »

Feel Good Tweet of the Day

Featured image I had no idea this was a thing, and if it wasn’t happening I’d have had to make it up: You really owe it to yourself to click through to the NewYorkerUnion home page, and take in the photos and statements of the “oppressed” class of New Yorker employees who are demanding justice! I have a hard time seeing any of them walking a picket line in Manhattan on a »

Civil War on the Left (77): Neera Miss Edition

Featured image I still argue that the divisions within the Democratic Party are going to make the Biden months (heh) in office difficult to manage. Don’t be fooled by the hand-holding Kumbaya drum circles you see right now. If you want an indication of this, look at the announcement today that Neera Tanden’s nomination to head OMB is being withdrawn. Her nomination was in trouble with Republicans from the start, but after »

Civil War on the Left (75): Biden Staff Edition

Featured image Well this didn’t take long. ‘People are pissed’: Tensions rise amid scramble for Biden jobs It is still early in the Biden transition. There are thousands of jobs to fill. But a similar sense of dread is starting to bubble up from veterans of the Biden campaign, particularly those who were there with the president-elect from the Philadelphia announcement speech to the Philadelphia victory speech. The target of their ire? »

Michael Moore Heresy Watch (Cont’d)

Featured image The environmentalist freakout about Michael Moore’s new film “Planet of the Humans” continues. The Guardian reports today about demands that the “dangerous” film be “taken down” and suppressed: Planet of the Humans has provoked a furious reaction from scientists and campaigners, however, who have called for it be taken down. Films for Action, an online library of videos, temporarily took down the film after describing it as “full of misinformation”, »

Civil War on the Left: Michael Moore Against the Greens

Featured image As John has already noted, the environmental left (aka, “the left”) is losing its lunch about the new Michael Moore-produced documentary “Planet of the Humans.” I have seen the the whole thing, and you might want to take it in, too, if you have 90 minutes to spare. If not, I have prepared a 10-minute highlight reel below that has a few (but only a very few!) of the best »

Civil War on the Left, Ch 71: Bitter Bummed Bernie Bros

Featured image It’s been a while since we’ve done an installment in our long running Civil War on the Left series, but it makes sense to take a time-out when the Democrats put it all on display in their nomination contest. But now that the nomination contest is over (maybe), it is fun to see how a lot of the Bernie bros aren’t going quietly into blithering Biden’s good night. Over at »

Civil War on the Left: Election Outlook Edition

Featured image One thing you can reliably count on in a presidential election cycle is that the raw ambition to power will cause candidates eventually to roll out their nastiest attacks on their intra-party rivals. Remember, for example, how embattled incumbent Jimmy Carter obliquely brought up Ted Kennedy’s disgrace at Chappaquiddick in 1980 with his comment that “I never panicked in a crisis,” or how Al Gore was the first person to »

Civil War on the Left, Ch. 68: Bernie Fratricide

Featured image Looks like the Bernie Bros are starting to have some fratricidal impulses. First up, Bernie lashed out at the Center for American Progress according to CNN: Sen. Bernie Sanders has accused a leading liberal think tank, founded and run by longtime Hillary Clinton allies, of orchestrating attacks on him and two other 2020 Democratic presidential candidates. In a letter provided to CNN by his campaign, Sanders addressed the board of »

Civil War on the Left, Ch. 67: Mueller Madness

Featured image The left is having a hard time coming to grips with its rout at the hands of the Mueller Report. As has been reported, Rachel Maddow’s viewership on MSNBC cratered last week, and The Guardian—The Frickin’ Guardian!!—wonders if Maddow should pay a price for her egregious sensationalizing of the collusion story: The worst-kept secret in the liberal media ecosystem is that Donald Trump is great for business. Rebranded for the »

Civil War on the Left, Ch. 66: Peak Superficiality?

Featured image One of the great things about being a leftist is that you don’t really need to proceed often beyond extremely superficial thinking to feel good about yourself and your cause. Two items today highlight this infantilism of the left: • Trending on Twitter: (Hat tip: Bethany Mandel) • Remember how OJ has been looking for “the real killer” for 25 years now? Meanwhile, leftists have discovered “the real moderates” among »

Civil War on the Left, Ch. 65: It’s an Amazon Out There!

Featured image I like to say that half of the problems with the world today are linguistic, specifically, softheaded thinking follows soft language. Back when we referred to “the jungle,” it was something we wanted to cut down, but now it is the rain forest, and we can’t touch it. No one much cared about trash when we took it to “the dump,” but now it is called the landfill, so we have »

Is Veganism a “Cultural Appropriation”?

Featured image We throw a lot of shade here at vegans, chiefly because it has taken on the affectations of ideology, such that cow-hating environmentalists would mandate a vegan diet for all of us if they could. There’s also much truth in the joke: “How do you do you know someone is vegan? Because they’ll eff-ing tell you!” But what will the oh-so-sensitive cultural left do when they realize that western veganism »

Civil War on the Left, Part 63: McCaskill Agonistes

Featured image For a long time now it has been necessary for Democrats to conceal their real views from voters if they expect to get re-elected. Funny how this happens time and time again. It is failing more of the time in recent years: just ask former Democratic Senators Mark Pryor and Mary Landrieu. Right now the person who is trying most strenuously to seem like not-a-Democrat is Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill. »

The Left to the Clintons: Please Go Away!

Featured image Yet another missive from Robert Kuttner of the lefty American Prospect that will warm the cockles, and many other things beside: Depart, I Say, and Let Us Have Done with You. That’s what Oliver Cromwell said to the Long Parliament in 1653. In May 1940, the British Conservative M.P. Leo Amery flung the same words at Neville Chamberlain, demanding that Hitler’s appeaser step down as British prime minister. The words »

Civil War on the Left, Part 62: The (Progressive ) Beat Goes On

Featured image Stunning news out of the Massachusetts primary this evening, where 10-term incumbent House member Michael Capuano has been defeated for re-election by Boston City Council member Ayanna Pressley. CBS News notes the obvious comparison to Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez: Boston City Council member Ayanna Pressley has unseated 10-term incumbent Rep. Michael Capuano, in a surprise upset in the Massachusetts Democratic primary Tuesday. Pressley, the first African-American woman elected to the Boston City Council in 2009 »

Civil War on the Left, Part 61: Identity Politics Dilemmas

Featured image This is one of those blogging equivalents to Hannibal Smith on the “A-Team,” who liked to sign off with, “I love it when a plan comes together!” In this case, I get to say, “I love it when a ‘Civil War on the Left’ entry writes itself.” This, from Robert Kuttner at the left-leaning American Prospect: Race, Class, and Loyalty. Ayanna Pressley, 44, is a respected African American member of the »